Likely to Die (28 page)

 Mercer Wallace calmly picked up the angle Chapman had opened and asked the next question. “Why don’t you tell us exactly what that relationship had been six months ago and what it was these last few weeks?”

 Dietrich looked like a caged animal, surrounded by the three of us, unable to walk out the door and explain to the medical school staff that the meeting had broken up because he had refused to answer questions about his personal life.

 “It’s very simple. A year ago—maybe it was fourteen months—we’d been spending a lot of time together on a project for Minuit. Planning a forum for the World Health Organization on brain trauma guidelines. Gemma was brilliant, beautiful—and I don’t think you need to know any more than that we had an affair. Left here together one night, I walked her home and she invited me up for a drink. Do you need illustrations, Mr. Wallace, or can you figure the rest of it out for yourself?”

 Mercer asked the usual questions about how often they had seen each other, where they had spent their time together, and how the romance ended.

 “Gemma wanted out. Frankly, I would have liked to marry her. She’d played with the idea at first but changed her mind rather quickly. Right after the summer, she came back from a trip to England and told me she didn’t want to see me anymore.”

 “D’you give it up, just like that?”

 “Do you mean, did I make a fool of myself, chasing her around the operating room with a butcher knife? Sorry, gentlemen, no.”

 “Didn’t you try to see her again, call her?” I asked.

 “Of course I did, in the beginning. But like I’ve said, she was stubborn. She didn’t mind the occasional night together, but absolutely no strings attached. And no discussion of hospital business.”

 Wallace was interested. “When was the last night you spent with her?”

 Dietrich hesitated as though he was weighing an answer against our ability to measure it through the word of a doorman or a neighbor. “The week before she was killed. Gemma called, asked if I wanted to have dinner. We left here late and stopped at Billy’s, over on First Avenue, for a bite. Then back to her place. Made love, went to sleep. I came home when she got up to jog. End of story. Except that whichever friend of mine put you onto this news,” he said, sneeringly, “has probably told you about the money Gemma loaned me.”

 “Yeah,” Chapman lied. “We wondered about it from her bank statements.” We hadn’t—yet—but this would spare us some surprises by the time we were able to get a look at her account information.

 “Don’t worry, detective, I’m good for it. The estate will get it back.”

 “Was it only that one payment?” Chapman bluffed.

 “Yes, last July. Forty thousand dollars.”

 I could read Mike’s mind. Forty large. More than most people made in a year. Dogen gave it to him when the courtship was hot and it still wasn’t paid back.

 “Did she ask for it?” Mike said. He left unspoken the word “recently.” He wanted to know if the subject had come up at the tryst two weeks earlier.

 “Money wasn’t terribly important to Gemma. We’d spent a weekend together in the country, down on the Eastern Shore. Went to an auction of antique cars. I saw a DeLage I fell in love with. Thirty-two, quite rare. She wanted me to have it, I couldn’t afford it. At that moment she meant it as a gift, but by the time I’d made the deal she’d moved on from our relationship, shall we say. Told me I could pay her back whenever I had the money. Surely you know by now she wasn’t materialistic. She had more than enough money for all she needed or wanted to do.”

 Dietrich pushed away from the table and got to his feet. “I assume you’ll be back with more questions for me but you might as well get on with the staff. I’ve lined up the people you were interested in and I’d like to get you going with them so they can get back to their patients and assignments. I’ll get over to my office and contact our lawyers about these documents.”

 He stroked the side of his head with his left hand before picking up the stack of subpoenas. Then he removed a metal mass from his pants pocket and splayed a handful of keys in his right hand until he held one of them—probably for his office—between his thumb and forefinger.

 Bill Dietrich backed away from us without any other comment and I noticed as he did that a replica of London’s Tower Bridge dangled from his fist. It was a duplicate of Dogen’s key chain that rested on my bureau, the one I had forgotten to return to Mercer. I wondered if Dietrich, too, still had the keys to Gemma’s home.

 19

 JOHN DUPRE WAS THE FIRST IN THE GROUPto be reinterviewed about the circumstances at Minuit on the evening of Gemma’s murder. He entered the room and extended his hand to each of us, and when he grinned at me in greeting I understood why Maureen Forester had found him so attractive. With none of the nonsense about how precious his time was and what a nuisance we were making of ourselves at the hospital, DuPre was gracious and expressed his willingness to do anything to move the investigation along.

 We had questioned him at the station house days earlier about his discovery of Pops in the radiology department. I apologized to him and explained our need to reexamine all the events surrounding the time of the murder.

 “Why don’t you start with your schedule last week?” I asked him. “Take us through it from Monday to Wednesday, just so we can put it in perspective.”

 His eyes met mine directly and he spoke with confidence and comfort. “Reminds me of the time our preacher was killed, back in Mississippi,” DuPre drawled with a smile on his face. “I was only eight but the State Police questioned every one of us in school like we were John Dillinger. Made quite an impression on me. Almost went into law enforcement instead of medicine. I admire what you’re doin‘. I know it’s like looking for the proverbial needle. I suppose some of my colleagues will take it personally, but I’m happy to help.”

 DuPre pulled out a pocket-sized diary and opened it to the preceding Monday. “You’re welcome to see my office appointment book, but I’m pretty clear that I never got over to this side of town until Thursday afternoon when I needed to use the library.”

 DuPre told us about his neurological practice and described his regular hours at the Central Park West office, which he had maintained since starting out in Manhattan two years ago. His receptionist and his assistant were there with him each day of the week.

 “How about evenings, Doc? Where’s home?”

 “Strivers’ Row, detective. One hundred thirty-ninth Street, north side,” DuPre answered, referring to the elegant group of row houses built in Harlem in the 1890s. “My wife’s a designer, Miss Cooper. McKim, Mead and White did the homes onour side of the block, and we’ve been busy restoring this one since we moved in. I’m doin‘ a lot of the woodwork myself, every night after we finish dinner with the kids. Y’all ought to come see it sometime.”

 That answer gave us three pieces of news. DuPre was making good money—or needed it—to fund a home at that address. It also placed him a few miles away from the medical center on the night of the murder, if that’s where he actually had been. And it provided the worst kind of alibi for us to break, if there was any reason at all to suspect him—a wife and two kids.

 Wallace shifted the young doctor away from the domestic scene and back to the deceased. “What was that expression you used to describe Dr. Dogen last week? Ice maiden?”

 “Maybe I’m just used to southern charm, Mr. Wallace. I told you I didn’t know her well enough to take it to heart, hear? It’s just that she was awfully stiff and remote with me. Simply couldn’t get through to her no matter how I tried.”

 “We’ve just given Mr. Dietrich a subpoena for some of the personnel records here at Mid-Manhattan, Dr. DuPre. We’ll be getting the files in a few days, but I’m wondering if there’s anything we might learn about you that you’d prefer to—”

 “You’re taking yourselves mighty serious, detective, aren’t you now? Gettingour records? The staff? Seems to me you’ve blown every good lead we’ve given you. Coleman Harper and I led you right straight to someone a hell of lot more dangerous than any of my colleagues and you messed that all up. Only have to be in here a couple of hours to know we’ve got a real problem controlling access to the hospital.”

 Unruffled—and sticking it right back at us. John DuPre was certainly a cool character.

 “While you’re on that other night, Dr. DuPre,” Chapman said, “was it your idea or Dr. Harper’s to go down to the X-ray room?” Chapman remembered, as I did, that each man had credited the other with the suggestion.

 “It was Coleman, definitely. Didn’t I tell you that? I had planned to do my work in the library that afternoon. I was talking with some of Spector’s protégés—Coleman would like to consider himself one, I guess—and he asked me to go on downstairs to radiology to have a look at some test pictures with him. No reason for me to be there otherwise.”

 Mike was probing for background. “What brought you to New York City to practice?”

 “A combination of circumstances, Mr. Chapman. My second wife grew up here, has all her family in town. And then, professionally—well, I’d outgrown my business back home. I’d been presenting papers at some conferences, began consulting with physicians around town who’d heard me lecture, and I decided to try the big time.”

 “Are you on the teaching staff at Minuit?”

 “No, no. I’ve got privileges here at the hospital. Just getting my foot in the door, new boy in town and all that. Can’t help you a bit with the politics of this place.”

 DuPre had no other useful information for us, as hard as Mike and Mercer pushed him on details about the medical center and the neurological service. They had finished their questioning and seemed mildly surprised when the quiet doctor asked them if they’d mind stepping outside while he spoke to me in private.

 “I gotta call the lieutenant,” Mike said. “We’ll be back in ten with another witness.”

 John DuPre waited for the door to close before speaking. “Two things I wanted to say to you, Miss Cooper. First, about my personnel file. You’re going to see that I’m in the middle of an ugly malpractice suit. Mean and frivolous. You’re welcome to talk with my lawyers about it but I’d sure as hell like to keep it out of the newspapers.”

 I let him go on.

 “A patient of mine died. Back home in Atlanta, before I came to New York. Has nothing to do with Mid-Manhattan or any of these events, of course. Young man had come to me with complaints—dizziness, weight loss, and so on. I examined him, tested him, sent him home with medication and an appointment for a battery of more workups. Two days later, he was dead.

 “I assure you I won’t try to hide anything from you. I just don’t want you looking at that as part of some damn murder case. You’re a lawyer and I expect you to be a lot more understanding than those cops about the legal ramifications of this.”

 “Did Gemma Dogen know about your lawsuit?”

 “I’m quite sure she did. Can’t swear to it ‘cause she never mentioned it to me. Could be one reason she was so cool to me, but we just won’t ever know that, will we?”

 “And the other matter?”

 DuPre smiled again, his serious news behind him. “If there’s anything missing from my file that you need, just give my office a call. They’ve got duplicates. I went through a rather messy divorce a few years back. Left my first wife for this one. Julia got a bit crazy and set fire to my office back home in Atlanta. I had to get new copies of all my diplomas and certificates from the universities. Not sure what they’ve got here at the hospital but my secretary has everything if you don’t find what you’re looking for here.”

 “Thanks, doctor. No reason you couldn’t have said all this in front of the detectives. Doesn’t sound like anything we can’t deal with quietly, professionally.”

 “Well, Miss Cooper. Maybe it’s my southern experience that makes me so damn skeptical of the police. I’d just rather have my private affairs in your hands than theirs,” he said, reaching across the table to clasp his fingers on top of mine. “I’m sure I’ll be speaking with you again.”

 Wallace was waiting outside the conference room with Banswar Desai, one of the two doctors who had been tapped by Spector to stand in for Gemma Dogen the morning after the stabbing when she had failed to appear in the operating room.

 Desai was short and squat, his skin several shades darker than John DuPre’s and his Pakistani accent coated with a thin veneer, courtesy of his British boarding school education. I invited him into the boardroom and whispered to Mercer that he should call Sarah and ask her to do a Lexis/Nexis check on DuPre, to search for news stories in the Georgia papers about the details of his pending lawsuit.

 I introduced myself to Dr. Desai and sat him at the table opposite me. Chapman rejoined us before I had gotten very far into the résumé.

 Desai was one of the newest members of the neurosurgical team, recruited to Minuit by Gemma Dogen the year before to start his residency there. He was clipped in his responses to us and fiercely defensive about his relationship with Dogen. She had been his mentor and his sponsor and it was clear to me that Desai was sincere in his expression of how devastated he was by Gemma’s loss.

 Mike focused his attention on the operation Spector had performed when he plucked Desai and Harper out of the gallery to stand in for the absent Dogen. “What’d you think when she didn’t show up for surgery? Worried about her?”

 “Quite unlike her, of course,” Desai replied. “Gemma was a consummate professional, Mr. Chapman. Did I think she’d gone missing? Not at all. I assumed something more pressing in her schedule had come up. Or that she and Spector had another row about something and—”

 “Row about what, Dr. Desai?”

 “I wasn’t privy to that information, detective. I knew there were issues that involved the program at Minuit that put the two of them at odds, but I’m much too junior a member of the department to have been let in on those conversations.”

 “You were Dogen’s friend, though, as well, weren’t you?”

 “Her friend, Mr. Chapman, certainly. But not her confidant. Our relationship was strictly confined to the hospital and medical school. Gemma drew a firm line between her students and her private life and I’m not aware of anyone who dared attempt to cross it.”